I’m a veteran Chicago-based consumer automotive journalist devoted to providing news, views, timely tips and reviews to help maximize your automotive investments. In addition to posting on Forbes.com, I'm a Contributing Editor for Consumers Digest magazine and write frequently on automotive topics for other national and regional publications and websites. My work also appears in newspapers across the U.S., syndicated by CTW Features. I'm the author of the Automotive Intelligentsia Money-Saving New-Car Guide and the Automotive Intelligentsia series of Sports Car Guides, available via Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble online and at the Apple iBook store. Email me at carguyjim@att.net.

10 Ways You May Be Killing Your Car

While many motorists treat it as a relationship of servitude, owning a car is ideally more of a partnership, with the driver taking the best care possible of his or her ride in exchange for many thousands of miles of reliable transportation. Unfortunately, too many car owners fail to keep up their end of the bargain, delaying regular maintenance, ignoring “check engine” warnings and putting off needed repairs because of financial hardship or just plain laziness.

“When consumers fail to properly maintain their vehicles, the resulting repair costs dwarf the money that could have been budgeted to maintain their car,” cautions Art Jacobsen, vice president of the auto maintenance and repair site CarMD.com.

The ASE-certified Master Tech technicians at CarMD.com put their collective heads together and compiled the following list of the 10 most common mistakes car owners commit that can result in substantial damage to their vehicles down the road:

Of these, the CarMD.com technicians determined that not having the oil changed at the prescribed intervals (#3 in the list) is the single most damaging act of neglect an owner can inflict on a car. Driving with dirty oil for extended periods can be murderous to today’s high-tech engines. And that’s for something that can take as little as $25 and a half hour of anyone’s time at a “quick lube” service shop to have accomplished.

Likewise with ignoring the “check engine” light, which is typically the result of having a faulty oxygen sensor, which in turn is often caused by driving with a dirty air filter (another $25 job to replace). Not only will continuing to operate a car with a bad O2 sensor cause its fuel economy to suffer substantially, it could eventually result in the need to replace the engine’s catalytic converter to the tune of $1,000 or more.

On the other hand, CarMD.com’s master techs caution consumers against unnecessarily squandering their money by “over maintaining” their vehicles beyond what’s recommended in their owners’ manuals. They cite unnecessary service “gimmicks” like fuel-injector flushes and replacing the air in tires with nitrogen as being particularly wasteful.

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